Rice – scenario :: INDIA

Rice – scenario :: INDIA

68% of the world’s irrigated area is in Asia, and that about half of this land is used for rice.

Rice is also the most important crop to millions of small farmers who grow it on millions of hectares throughout the region, and to the many landless workers who derive income from working on these farms. 

Economic pressure is likely to move land, water, and labor away from rice to other activities.

Under the Business as usual reference scenario, the price of rice will increase almost 50% by 2025, and will continue to increase, although at a slower pace, from 2025 to 2050.

Labor :: By far the main costs in rice farming are land and labor, saving labor in rice cultivation has a price because many poor laborers receive a substantial portion of their income from available work in rice fields, and lower rice prices may force wages down. In the short run, laborers will have difficulty finding new jobs. Rural-urban migration are leading to rural labor shortages and higher rural labor wage rates, further discouraging labor-intensive rice farming.

Rise of $ :: Most commodities, including crude oil and grains are priced in U.S. dollars, but are purchased in the local currency. The world market price of rice in dollars is a poor indicator of profitability in the domestic market. Inflation in the market drops the price of rice but if the price doubles the domestic market shows a relatively no rise in price over the past few decades.

Lower prices do not necessarily mean lower profitability. The main factor driving the long-term decline in agricultural prices is technological progress that contributes to a drop in the unit cost of production.

Crude price :: Crude price will continue to rise in future. Rise in crude price will lead to rise in cost of fertilizers and insecticides needed to harvest the ‘Green revolution’ rice verities causing the increase of expenditure of the farmer. 

Insecticides and fertilizers :: Reoccurring pest outbreaks. - Many pests that caused major problems for rice intensification programs in the 1970s and 1980s have returned as major threats to production, primarily due to breakdowns in crop resistance and the excessive use of broad-spectrum, long-residual insecticides that disrupt natural pest control mechanisms.

Urban food habits :: At high levels of income, rice becomes an inferior commodity, and consumers prefer diverse foods with more protein and vitamins, such as vegetables, bread, fish and meat. Growing urbanization that accompanies economic growth leads to changes in food habits and the practice of eating away from home, which further reduces per capita rice consumption.

Rise in retail price of rice and its effects :: Rice retail food prices have increased due to such reasons as increasing food demand, high crop prices, increasing labor cost(excluding labor at rice field) and energy costs. These effects are not likely to stop, and the same increases will be experienced in future. A rise in the price of rice is equivalent to a drop in real income for the majority of the poor who are net consumers of rice. Higher prices increase the number of poor people and push people deeper into poverty and hunger, forcing them to sacrifice essentials such as more nutritious food, health care, and children’s education—thus condemning future generations to a vicious poverty cycle. The rice price will continue to rise because of low yield growth and limited area expansion. Statistical analysis of these factors and other key trends suggests that prices will remain near their current levels for the medium term. The one possible countervailing factor is the long-term slowdown in yield growth that has occurred throughout. If yield growth continues to decelerate, and does so more quickly than population growth, per capita production will begin to decline, and this may cause rice prices to rise again.

Trade Import/Export:: India is not a major factor in determining world commodity prices at world market because they do not trade. Increasingly popular food in Africa, with imports into Africa accounting for almost one-third of the total world trade. Latest trend of agricultural investment is seen by Indian firms in African continent.

Rice farmers :: Despite the higher cultivation costs of modern rice varieties has left the farmer poorer over the 40 years. Spending on education or health care for their children is a luxury many rural poor cannot afford at all. This condemns one generation after another to a prison of poverty and debt reinforced by cost of farming on to the farmer. In turn, malnutrition perpetuates poverty as it directly reduces the productive ability of those afflicted. Lead to a reduction in rice area there as farmers switch to other high-value crops. The High wages elsewhere, small town boredom, changing mindset of rural population towards city facilities, some may say but so is the believe that farming is low status job unworthy of modern youth causing the youth to drift as hired workers provide the vast bulk of labor to the cities.

Bio- fuel ::  Rising marketing costs (the difference between farm value and what consumers spend on food) are accounting for an increasing share of retail food expenditures. Higher and more volatile energy prices are quickly being passed onto the consumer. At the same time, the share of retail food expenditures spent on farm commodities is declining. Global economic conditions may result in continued food inflation. Global crop stocks are at record lows due to crops being used for non-food purposes. The use of raw materials in the fast-growing bio-fuel industry for the production of the petroleum-substitute ethanol

Population :: World population has more than doubled since the 1950s. . It may increase another 3 billion before stabilizing in 2100. Population growth is outstripping production growth. Expanding global populations with rising incomes are also cutting into global food supplies. This growth in population and consumption could outpace the projected growth of agricultural production and maintain high food inflation unless agricultural productivity is boosted.

Real estate land grabbing :: Over the years little room for expansion of rice area. The possibility of increasing the rice area is almost exhausted in most Asian countries. In many areas, highly productive rice land has been lost to housing and industrial development. The rice area will remain at this level or decline in future because of scarcity and competition from other agricultural and non-agricultural uses such as industrialization and urbanization urbanization in spite of global rise in stocks of rice production will fails to keep pace with demand growth.

Rice :: Crude Oil

Some studies conclude that oil prices and rising production and transportation costs have helped drive current commodity price increases. But many of these impacts occur with a significant lag. Higher crude oil prices have pushed up the cost of producing agricultural commodities through increases in the price of inputs, such as fertilizer and diesel, but the long-term impact of these increases has yet to be felt.

Agricultural commodity price increases have a much greater impact on low-income consumers, especially in developing countries, because food is a much larger fraction of total expenditures and commodities are a larger share of their food consumption. Another side of the higher commodity price story that has gotten relatively little attention is the potentially large supply response that could result as farmers in developing countries increase production and productivity. Higher prices could induce these farmers to purchase and use inputs such as improved seeds and fertilizer, which would lead to substantial increases in productivity and economic gains.

Prices of rice, which were Rs.13/kg in 2005 went up to Rs.22/kg in October 2009 have reached Rs.48/kg in January 2010. •Price paid to the kisan for Rice is between Rs.9 to 10 per kg in the last 3 years but the retail price of Rice has gone up to Rs.48

Product (Rs./Kg) Metro cities	2005	2007	Oct, 2009	Jan,2010
Rice	13	15	22	48
Wheat	9	12	13	29
Sugar	19	19	32	50
Tur Dal	30	36	82	100

The world price of oil-dependent fertilizers—essential for rice production—has increased sharply, with the price of urea exploding. The rapid growth of the biofuel industry has also increased pressure

Drought / Flood and poverty in rice belt

Agriculture is the mainstay of the Indian economy. It accounts for 24% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 15% of total exports. It provides livelihood to 65% of the population and direct employment to 58% of the workforce (DAC 2004). Rice is the single most important food grain; it occupies 36% of the gross cropped area and accounts for 42% of the total food-grain production in India. The eastern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, West Bengal, and Orissa are the major rice-growing areas, accounting for about half of the total rice production in the country. Much of this production is carried out under rain fed conditions. In India, drought is a perennial phenomenon, recurring every few years.

Irrespective of the probability estimates used, the expected proportionate loss is highest for Orissa(in 2004) and lowest for Chattisgarh. The total annual loss in rice production for the three states combined is 1.0 to 1.3 million tons, which is about 7–9% of the mean output. Using the average rough rice price of $125 per ton, the value of annual production loss estimated this way is $125 to $175 million. Rice is the main kharif-season crop in all three states.

“one year drought creates a 5 year problem” Sukraram Dhuru from Raipur’s Kumarkhan village

The loss in agricultural output is not the only consequence of drought. In rural areas where agricultural production is the major source of income and employment, a decrease in agricultural production will set off second-round effects through forward and backward linkages of agriculture with other sectors. The loss in household income can result in loss in consumption of the poor, whose consumption levels are already low. Farmers may cope with the loss by liquidating productive assets, pulling children out of school, migrating to distant places in search of employment, and going deeper into debt. The economic and social costs of all these consequences can indeed be enormous. Rain fed rice-growing areas in sub-humid tropics have low agricultural productivities and are the major “poverty hotspots.”

Hydrological drought is defined as the situation of depletion in surface and subsurface water resources due to a shortfall in precipitation.

Agricultural drought is said to occur when soil moisture is insufficient to meet crop water requirements, resulting in yield losses.

Agricultural and hydrological droughts are almost inevitable when meteorological drought occurs (Situation in which actual rainfall is significantly below the long-term average).

When drought occurs, the agricultural sector is usually the first to be affected. Even though the meteorological drought is over, the adverse economic impact of drought may persist for several years depending upon the nature of drought. In addition, people who were poor even during normal years are likely to be pushed deeper into poverty.

The above data is to understand the effect of drought:

1.      To understand the nature and magnitude of drought risk in drought-prone rice- growing areas,

2.      To estimate the economic costs of drought at the aggregate level,

3.    To estimate the economic costs of drought at the farm-household level, and analyze farmers’ drought-coping mechanisms,

4.      To analyze the impact of drought on poverty, and

5.    To suggest alternative options for technology and policy interventions for the effective management of drought.

This reflects in the low average incomes in the village, across all land categories. Many people have migrated elsewhere in this village in pursuit of alternate employment, as there is no opportunity in the village after heavy damage from the cyclone.

The economic costs of drought to rainfed rice farmers and to the nation as a whole are on the order of several hundred million dollars per year. Farmers use various coping mechanisms to deal with the consequences of drought. These coping mechanisms are, however, inadequate to prevent a reduction in income and consumption, especially of the poor and vulnerable groups. Drought in these three states alone can push an additional 13 million people below the poverty line. In addition, people who are poor even during normal years get pushed deeper into poverty during drought years. De- spite the considerable expenditures made to provide relief to drought-affected areas, to improve soil moisture availability through watershed programs, and to generally reduce vulnerability to drought through agricultural development programs, the overall economic and social costs of drought continue to remain high.

Drought is a major constraint to rice production in Asia, where at least 20% of the total rice area is drought prone. When rice is grown under rain fed conditions, both the area sown and the yield depend mainly on the available rainfall; any shortage in rains translates directly into production losses. Although most other natural disasters, such as floods and cyclones, result in visible and immediate loss of life and infrastructure, the effects of drought are creeping and long-lasting. It cripples the livelihoods of a large number of people, often trapping them in perpetual poverty. Even without the extremes of starvation and death, drought is a major economic and social burden that slows economic growth and makes escape from poverty enormously difficult.

A powerful example of drought’s impact on rice production is seen in the zigzag trend in rice yields in Orissa, one of the major drought-prone states of eastern India. Almost every upward movement in rice yields is followed by major down-swings, most of which are caused by drought. Orissa experiences drought once every three or four years and often in consecutive years. It is the severity and frequency of drought that largely account for the slow growth in rice production in Orissa over time, and similar patterns are seen in other drought-prone areas in eastern India.

Drought results in production loss not only of rice and other crops grown with rice, but also of subsequent non-rice crops that require the rice fields’ residual soil moisture. The value of production loss resulting from drought is indeed very large. In three states of eastern India—Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa—where rain fed rice is grown widely, the average production loss of rice during drought years is estimated to be 5.4 million tons—over 30% of the annual production in non drought years. In severe drought years, the loss can rise to as high as 40–50% of normal production. When production losses of rice and non-rice crops are considered together with the costs farmers bear by adjusting their production system to try to cope with drought, the total annual economic loss in these three states alone is close to US$400 million. 

And, as opportunities for farm employment dry up in the face of drought, so too do the incomes of farm laborers who rely on rice production for their wages. It is estimated that in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa, almost 13 million people who sit perilously just above the poverty line fall back below it due to drought-induced income loss. Others already below the poverty line in non-drought years are pushed further down.  If drought occurs in consecutive years, the situation is even worse. As farmers go into debt and liquidate their productive as-sets—such as bullocks, farm implements, and even land—they are trapped even deeper within a poverty from which escape becomes more and more difficult.

Analysis of rainfall data for India highlights the increase in the frequency of severe rainstorms over the last fifty years. The number of storms with more than 100 mm rainfall in a day is reported to have increased by 10 percent per decade (UNEP 2007).

Rice :: water relationship / INDIA

According to the Comprehensive Assessment, there are currently about 300 million hectares of irrigated land worldwide—double the area in 1960. About 80 million hectares (27%) of this irrigated land is used for rice production. Because rice receives more water than other crops, it uses some 39% of the world’s irrigation water.

One is based on maps of irrigation schemes (Siebert et al), which may include areas that could be, but may in fact not be, irrigated; the other is based on satellite data (Thenkabail etal). The relative strengths and weaknesses of these two sources are open to debate, but they have at least one limitation in common: they show only the presence or absence of irrigation, not how much water is currently available or will be in the future. This is important because the future of irrigation is uncertain in many areas.


Climatic Change its effect on rice cultivation in India


In India 51 percent area under rice cultivation is irrigated, and the rest 49 percent is rain-fed. 51% area area depends on the rivers but the risk of the melting glacial region in the future will have drastic effect the cultivation, Indian peninsula has a history of deep drought situation with an approximately a 31% probability chance. The decrease in ground water table is one major concern at present for agricultural in India. (will cover in the other section of the research)

The Himalayan range contains high altitude glaciers that supply water to many rivers in Asia. These rivers provide water to more than half of the world’s population. Many people in Asia are dependent on glacial melt water during dry season. 

Accelerated glacial melt questions the very perennial nature of many of the Himalayan flowing rivers. This is likely to have huge implications on those dependent on the resource affecting water availability for agricultural purposes. In Nepal and Bhutan, melting glaciers are filling glacial lakes beyond their capacities contributing to Galcial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) (UNEP 2007).


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A recent study for the World Bank has shown that the volume of water resulting from glacial melt in Nepal makes up less than 5% of the flows of rivers leaving the country and contributing to the Ganges downstream.

"That is, about 95% or more of the river flow is the result of rain and melting seasonal snow," said report co-author Richard Armstrong, a glaciologist from the University of Colorado at Boulder, US.

If that is true, rivers downstream of the eastern Himalayas will hardly be affected, even if the glaciers recede or disappear.

However, would the other contributing factors to the rivers' flow, such as precipitation and snowfall, remain the same in the changing climate?

No, say scientists, but whether that will lead to rise or fall of rivers' levels - and by how much and when - are the questions still waiting to be answered.

Some scientists say increasing temperature has meant that glaciers don't get enough snowfall during winter and therefore river flow during summer is dwindling.

"We have seen the decline in the flow of the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum rivers," says Professor Mohammad Sultan Bhat of Kashmir University, who has conducted field studies with India's flood and irrigation department.

"We have recorded a decrease of 40% in the flow of Jhelum's tributary river… that is fed by the receding Kolahi glacier."

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India accounts for the largest share (59%) of the total drought-prone rice area in Asia. Most of these drought-prone areas are rain fed. In India, major droughts in 1918, 1957-58, and 1965 resulted in famines during the 20th century (FAO 2001). The 1987 drought affected almost 60% of the total cropped area and 285 million people across India (Sinha 1999).

Minor famines of 1860,1866,1869 and 1874 and extremely severe famine of 1877 and 1878, 1889 famine then in1896,1897, 1900,1901, 1902 minor famine1906,1907,1908,1909, drought 1915 then 1919 famine,

India drought 1950, 1951, 1952, 1958, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967,1968 – 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988 - 1993, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, In India, drought is a perennial phenomenon, recurring every few years. The country witnessed 40 droughts of varying intensity during 1876-2002. This translates into approximately a 31% probability of drought.

RICE :: INDIA

The net area sown is nearly 142 M ha, of which only 51 percent is irrigated, while the gross cropped area is approximately 189 M ha. There are about 106 million operational holdings with an average size of 1.57 ha. About 78 percent of the holdings are less than 2 ha, belonging to small and marginal farmers, and cover 32 percent of the total cultivated area. 44.6 M ha in rice, of the total rice area, only 51 percent is irrigated, so 49 percent is rainfed. 

Rice :: Area, production and productivity in India

Rice versus total grain production in India

India :: rice production from 1980 -2006

 India :: fertilizer use in rice production from 1980 -2006


In parallel developments, by the early 1990s the widespread planting of the semidwarf HYVs and hybrid rices in densely planted areas of Asia amounted to about 72 million hectares. These HYVs share a common semidwarf gene (sd1) and largely the same cytoplasm (either from "China" in older HYVs or "Wild Abortive" in the hybrids). This poses a serious threat of production losses due to a much narrowed genetic base if wide-ranging pest epidemics should break out, as was the case with hybrid maize in the United States during 1970—1 (Chang 1984).

(Green revolution) Since the early 1970s, poorly educated rice farmers in South and Southeast Asia have planted the same HYV in successive crop seasons and have staggered plantings across two crops. Such a biologically unsound practice has led to the emergence of new and more virulent biotypes of insect pests and disease pathogens that have overcome the resistance genes in the newly bred and widely grown HYVs. The result has been heavy crop losses in several tropical countries in a cyclic pattern (Chang and Li 1991; Chang 1994).

West Bengal(15.5%), was the largest rice producer followed by Uttar Pradesh(13.5%), Andhra Pradesh(13.3%), Punjab(9.2%), Tamil Nadu(9.6%), Bhir(7.7%), Orissa(6.3%) and Madhya Pardesh (6.2%)

Rice –INDIA -2000

India produces 22.40 % of the world rice second to China 31.76% during 2000

Rice is the single most important food grain; it occupies 36% of the gross cropped area and accounts for 42% of the total food-grain production in India during 2000-01. More than 50 percent of country’s population depends fully or partially on rice as it constitutes the main cereal food crop of the diet. During 1999-2000, in the states like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Kerala, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, rice consumption accounted for more than 80 percent share in total cereal intake.

Along the Malabar Coast of southwestern India. For millions rice is the chief dish, if not the only dish, at every meal. Rice originated in a tropical, very rainy, marshy country. Today there are more than 2400 varieties including about 1000 in India alone -- special strains adapted to local differences in soil, temperature and rainfall.

The eastern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, West Bengal, and Orissa are the major rice-growing areas, accounting for about half of the total rice production in the country. Much of this production is carried out under rain fed conditions. It is estimated that about 10 percent of foodgrains produced in India, are lost in processing and storage. It has been reported that about 9 percent of paddy is lost due to use of old and outdated methods of drying and milling, improper and unscientific methods of storage, transport and handling. It has been estimated that total post harvest losses of paddy at producers’ level was about 2.71 percent of total production. 

With rising costs in labor, chemicals, fuel, and water, the farmers in irrigated areas will be squeezed between production costs and market price. The latter, dictated by government pricing policy in most countries, remains lower than the real rice price (David 1991). Meanwhile, urbanization and industrialization will continue to deprive the shrinking farming communities of skilled workers, especially young men. Such changes in rice-farming communities will have serious and widespread socioeconomic implications.


Rice :: Export from India 

In early 2008, India imposed export bans on non-basmati rice or restrictions to protect the domestic consumers.

Rice :: Asia 1920 - 1990

Rice is a staple food for more than a third of mankind. It constitutes the diet of one thousand six hundred million people and another four hundred million rely on it for between a quarter and half of their diet. Nutritive value of Rice protein (biological value =80) is much higher than that of the wheat (biological value =60) and maize (biological value =50) or other cereals.

Rice is a self-fertilizing plant. Around 1920, however, Japanese and U.S. rice breeders took the lead in using scientific approaches (hybridization selection and testing) to improve rice varieties. Elsewhere, pure line selection among farmers’ varieties was the main method of breeding.

After World War II, many Asian countries started to use hybridization as the main breeding approach. Through the sponsorship of the FAO, several countries in South and Southeast Asia joined in the Indica-Japonica Hybridization Project during the 1950s, exchanging rice germ plasm and using diverse parents in hybridization.

These efforts, however, provided very limited improvement in grain yield (Parthasarathy 1972), and the first real breakthrough came during the mid— 1950s when Taiwan (first) and mainland China (second) independently succeeded in using their semidwarf rices in developing short-statured, nitrogen-responsive and high-yielding semidwarf varieties (HYVs). These HYVs spread quickly among Chinese rice farmers (Chang 1961; Huang, Chang, and Chang 1972; Shen 1980).

Taiwan’s semidwarf "Taichung Native 1" (TN1) was introduced into India through the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) located in the Philippines. "TNI" and IRRI-bred "IR8" triggered the "Green Revolution" in tropical rices (Chandler 1968; Huang et al. 1972). Subsequent developments in the dramatic spread of the HYVs and an associated rise in area grain yield and production have been documented (Chang 1979a; Dalrymple 1986), and refinements in breeding approaches and international collaboration have been described (Brady 1975; Khush 1984; Chang and Li 1991).

Rice production in Asian countries steadily increased from 240 million metric tons during 1964—6 to 474 million tons in 1989—90 (IRRI 1991). Among the factors were expansion in rice area and/or irrigated area; adoption of high-yielding, semidwarf varieties (HYVs); use of nitrogen fertilizers and other chemicals (insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides); improved cultural methods; and intensified land use through multiple cropping (Herdt and Capule 1983; Chang and Luh 1991).

In the early 1970s, China scored another breakthrough in rice yield when a series of hybrid rices (F1 hybrids) were developed by the use of a cytoplasmic pollen-sterile source found in a self-sterile wild plant ("Wild Abortive") on Hainan Island (Lin and Yuan 1980). The hybrids brought another yield increment (15 to 30 percent) over the widely grown semidwarfs.

Along with the rapid and large-scale adoption of the HYVs and with deforestation and development projects, innumerable farmers’ traditional varieties of all three ecogenetic races and their wild relatives have disappeared from their original habitats — an irreversible process of "genetic erosion." The lowland group of the javanic race (bulu, gundill) suffered the heaviest losses on Java and Bali in Indonesia. Sizable plantings of the long-bearded bulus can now be found only in the Ifugao rice terraces of the Philippines.